The Story of SARS, Part One

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2013

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr Kevin Fong begins a two-part special looking back at the extraordinary events which unfolded a decade ago when the disease known as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) first emerged onto an unsuspecting world.

In a matter of days SARS had travelled around the globe from a hotel room in Hong Kong - and would go on to infect thousands of people, in dozens of countries. But standing between us and the virus were hundreds of healthcare workers who risked their lives to fight against and contain this unknown deadly disease, some of whom paid the ultimate price. With concerns rising over H7N9 and MERS, Kevin asks what lessons have we learned since the first SARS outbreak and would those who stepped up to protect us back then, do so again?

(Image: Sign for the accident and emergency unit at the L'Hopital Francais de Hanoi. Credit: BBC copyright)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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0:37.0	Thank you for downloading from the BBC.
0:40.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use go to BBCworldservice.com slash
0:46.3	podcasts. I'm standing across the road from what was once the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong.
0:57.0	Ten years ago, an unknown deadly virus arrived here from mainland China and from this location went global.
1:06.7	Thousands fell ill, hundreds died and worldwide healthcare workers went to war.
1:14.7	I'm Kevin Fong, and this is Discovery on the BBC.
1:20.8	That was the beginning of the nightmare. Every day we see more and more people developing the same units.
1:28.0	Healthcare workers typically don't think about themselves.
1:31.0	Everybody is dying, people are getting sick. The nurses and the doctors are still going in.
1:35.6	We were fighting in the dark and there was no effective weapons.
1:39.6	I thought if I get the infection, I might die. So I wrote a note to my children.
1:46.1	I knew that it was getting sicker and sicker, but I hoped deep down in my heart that it could make it.
1:53.0	It was the first global threat and it was the way that the disease spread so quickly,
1:58.0	suddenly around the world in one night.
2:01.0	I was really scared.
2:02.0	Two-third of my staff was sick and hospitalized more than 24 people and some of these people were going to die.
	...

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